India seeks to capture MacBook production, says Economic Times
Top sources in the IT ministry of the government in India say they have offered Apple increased incentives to begin manufacturing MacBooks and iPads in India, following the success of iPhone manufacturing there. The IT ministry is the main driver of production-linked incentives (PLI) to drive hardware manufacturing in India, and has seen wide success in the past few years.
According to Outlook India, after the smartphone production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme came into effect, 50,000 direct jobs were reportedly created by Apple’s contract manufacturers and component suppliers in India. The contract manufacturers for Apple’s iPhones in India include Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron while Sunwoda, Avary, Foxlink, and Salcomp are the component suppliers.
In addition to the direct jobs, the Apple manufacturing ecosystem in India may have also created almost 100,000 indirect jobs, The Economic Times reported citing a government official. According to experts, Apple may have emerged as the largest employer of blue-collar workers in India’s rapidly expanding electronics industry through its contract manufacturers.
Is this ecosystem growing fast enough to support the IT ministry’s goals? Apple and other OEMs must balance the risk of moving these high volume programs from China where this support system is well established. Further, China is a huge market for these devices and as Apple moves manufacturing out of China, it risks alienating these consumers.
